France Bans Glyphosate aka RoundUp

It’s great to see a country take action on toxic chemicals–even if it’s not our own. After the United Nations called it a “probable human carcinogen,” France banned the sale of glyphosate–aka Roundup–at garden centers nationwide. The most widely sprayed herbicide on the planet, glyphosate is used in tandem with genetically modified “Roundup Ready” crops like corn and soybeans. According to Newsweek, as of 2012 Roundup was also the herbicide of choice for New York City parks.

And recently, the Center for Environmental Health, Beyond Pesticides and Physicians for Social Responsibility sued the EPA and Administrator Gina McCarthy for endangering “public health by refusing to require disclosure of falsely characterized ‘inert’ ingredients in pesticides,” Courthouse News reported.

Lead attorney Yana Garcia was quoted as saying, “What we’re challenging is EPA’s inaction despite a body of evidence [that] chemicals listed as inert are not inert. Consumers think the inert ingredients are water or other benign substances used to mix the chemicals, but many are carcinogenic and others have acute impacts and still others have impacts that are currently unknown.”

Obviously the wheels of justice turn slowly. But at least we now have Roundup in our sights.

Trackbacks

[…] It’s about time we started taking Monsanto to court. The EPA estimates that between between 10,000 and 20,000 farmworkers are poisoned each year from pesticide exposure, according to Farmworker Justice. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s bestselling herbicide, was recently listed as a possible human carcinogen by the World Health Organization. California is considering classifying the toxic chemical as carcinogenic, under Proposition 65. And France outright banned it. […]